San Mateo-Foster City tax vote exposes a lurking fiscal danger

For years, public school districts in San Mateo County and elsewhere in the state have looked longingly at parcel taxes (special levies placed on individual properties) to bolster their bottom lines.

About half of the county’s districts have such taxes in place. Others would love to have a budget-booster as well. But there’s one district that had such a tax and then lost it — the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District.

That kinder-garten-through-eighth-grade operation, the largest of its kind in the county, with an enrollment of about 12,000 students, tried to renew an existing $209 parcel tax (which generated about $7 million) in 2017, and, surprisingly, it was turned down by district voters who did not provide it with the necessary two-thirds majority.

That rejection has exposed a lurking danger in the increasing reliance on extra money raised via the ballot box: The citizenry typically has the option, at some point, to shut off the spigot.

The San Mateo-Foster City district is seeking to have its constituents approve a new, larger parcel tax at the Nov. 6 election. This one, Measure V, would impose a $298 charge on each district property. That’s a 45 percent increase over the previous version.

If given the OK by the voters next month, Measure V would begin to bolster the district’s coffers by $10 million as of July 1, 2019. The levy, which would increase yearly via an inflation rate, would expire in 2028 without another voter OK.

What’s worrisome is that, as public agencies often do, the district’s officials came to rely on its parcel tax dollars to finance, in part, important services and personnel — in other words, employee salaries and benefits.

Now, if Measure V fails to pass (it needs a two-thirds vote), maintaining or increasing those requirements would continue to be in jeopardy.

The retirement benefits portion of the unionized employees’ pay packages are troublesome because they are rising quickly, regardless of what happens with Measure V.

The state of California is requiring public agencies to assume ever-increasing unfunded retiree costs. It’s no wonder San Mateo-Foster City authorities are predicting unhealthy fiscal conditions (deficits, employee unrest, etc.) down the road.

Approval of Measure V, however, would go a long way toward addressing any budgetary shortfall.

What to do?

Halloween looms. Traditional spooky costumes and decorations are, as usual, all the rage.

But what do you do with a pumpkin that weighs more than a ton? That question was broached earlier this month when a gargantuan gourd tipping the scale at 2,170 pounds won an annual weigh-in on the Coastside.

That agricultural monster, though, paled in comparison to another winning whopper in New Hampshire; that bulbous blob set a North American record at a staggering 2,528 pounds.

That’s a lot of pumpkin pie. Somehow, the idea of plopping such a creation on your front porch as a sort of festive Jabba the Hutt is simply absurd. It would take a crane to maneuver the hulking thing into place.

Removing it would be more of the same. Then what? As it ages, does it slowly become a massive mound of mulch? Perhaps.

That’s going to be one unwieldy recycling project. Break out the chainsaws.